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id Software isn’t known for strong, single player storytelling. They usually leave that to others such as Raven Software. Anyone that has played their games knows that they’re more about eye candy and blistered trigger fingers replacing favorite fictional moments with tales of narrowly avoiding your best friend’s missile punch.

The Game Developer Choice Awards have picked coding guru, John Carmack, as this year’s recipient of their Lifetime Achievement award according to the newshounds at Blue’s News. With it, he joins other names such as Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Policenauts), Wil Wright (SimCity, The Sims, Spore), and Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda) who have also won the annual award.

If you’re not sure who he is, Carmack is the co-founder and technical director of id Software, the developer that many credit with single-handedly starting up the FPS revolution in the early nineties. The 3D engines that he developed for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake along with his continual improvements have made an undeniable impact on the modern FPS. I can’t even begin to count the hours spent in Quake II’s multiplayer, or modding maps for Wolf 3D.

He also launches rockets in his spare time through the aerospace company he founded, Armadillo Aerospace.

It’s been a long time in coming, but as a programming pioneer whose contributions have helped shaped how we play, it goes without saying that it’s also as well deserved.

Zenimax Media has apparently caught every other publisher by surprise in acquiring iD Software, placing the legendary developer underneath the same roof as Bethesda according to this press release. It was only four years earlier that Activision had made a quiet bid to acquire the developer or its IPs only to be turned down.

For those of you that have no idea who Zenimax is, you aren’t the first, but they have an impressive roster of who’s who in Hollywood on their Board such as Jerry Bruckheimer and they’ve been Bethesda’s home for nearly more than a decade. They just seem to let their developers do most of the talking.

So does this mean that the next Elder Scrolls will have Hell-borne wickedness oozing out of every megatextured portal? Probably not. Does it mean that John Carmack’s programming wizardry might find its way into projects elsewhere within the Zenimax empire? That’s more likely.Continue reading →

Gametrailers has received a new, exclusive, teaser inviting players to step back into the boots of BJ Blazkowicz and blow away the Third Reich’s obsession with the occult. Using iD’s Tech 4 engine behind Doom 3′s hellish resurrection, longtime partners, Raven Software, have pushed its limits with a host of wall busting, ghost killing effects to whet everyone’s appetite. Here are a few captures to get you excited about heading back to WW2 without having to storm the beaches of Normandy all over again.